The Scintilla Project, Day 11. The Horror. The Horror.

Day 11.  Write about an experience you had that was so strange or incredible, it sounds like it could have been made up.

WARNING.  This story is contains a significant amount of shit.  If you are easily deterred by talk of such things or bear a stomach that is easily turned, I would advise stopping here and coming back tomorrow.

I liked Sundays.  It used to be Sal's shift; I'd be a monkey's uncle before I let anyone else run his show.  Sure, they were fourteen hour runs flying solo, but it wasn't such a drag.  They tended to be quiet, with my only customers being locals and service staff rolling in for a pint after their shifts.  25 to 40 of the register was the norm, and in between cleaning projects and HBO original programming, I had crossword puzzles and su doku to keep me busy.  It was nice.

That Sunday was like any other Sunday.  My only customers were a nice young couple playing pool in the back, Deadwood was on, and I was reorganizing the beer fridges for the ninetieth time because my coworkers couldn't be bothered to bring up the right amounts of, well, anything.  I heard the door open in the back, heard the shuffle of feet, but I didn't pay them much mind.  Because, fuck, Deadwood.

"Bathroom?"

I tossed the guy a glance, too fast to pick up many details.  He looked pretty shabby, but who the fuck was I to judge?  "Downstairs, buddy," I said with a well-rehearsed half-grin and a nod.  Then back to Al Swearengen and trying to cram a case of Rolling Rock into four rows.

A few minutes later, I was approached by half of the aforementioned young couple.

"Um, did someone let their dog in here?"

"Huh?"

"I think someone's dog came in here.  There's, um..."  She gestured helplessly towards the pool table, from whence the guy looking to use the bathroom had come.  We kept the bar pretty dark (helped distract from how shitty a job our cleanup guy did), so I walked back with her to see what she was talking about.

I could smell it before I could see it.  My head was in denial, but my heart knew the truth.  There, on the mismatched synthetic tile like an mismade churro, was a literal piece of crap.  I sighed.  "Yeah, a dog," I lied as again that half-grin made it to my lips.  "I'll take care of it."

I turned to grab the dustpan and broom out of the kitchen, took one step.

My foot slid.  Not enough to throw me off balance.  Just enough to let me know it wasn't carpet I just stepped on.

My smile faded; I swallowed as my eyes traveled up, following the dead-straight line from where I stood to the stairs to the bathroom.  There, in the shitty light of the bar, I could see a trail.  Like a scatological Hansel, he'd left a series of nuggets leading to the stairwell.

I crept forward like the black guy in a horror movie, knowing that with each step I took, only terrible things would greet me.  Yet onward I tread.  There, on the tile wall along the stairs, a dark brown smear where he leaned against the wall.  There, on the railing as he turned the corner.  Crushed beneath his foot on the floor on the way to the men's room.  And there I stood, in the doorway without a door because too many people were doing coke in there, wanting to walk away, but knowing I couldn't.

I set my jaw, straightened my spine, and walked in.

There are no words sufficient.  It was an odious horror in brown and black.  It was everywhere.  Smeared against the wall, streaked across the floor, shot at the seat and bowl like rounds from a high-pressure paintball gun.  The splatter patterns didn't even make sense; they seemed to defy physics in both direction and force.  It was in the sink.  It was on the ceiling.  It was like a shit grenade.  A poopsplosion.  Like eighteen minutes after Jackson Pollack had eaten a Crave Case.

And as I stood in that tiny cubicle of crap, my mind long past disgust and revulsion and simply soaking in the wonder of the moment, I knew that it would fall to me to clean it up.  To scrub every last ounce of shit, solid and fluid alike, from the surfaces, to wipe them down and bleach them out.  And I breathed in deep, knowing I was inhaling atomized excrement, knowing that I would never experience anything quite like this.

And that, my friends, is why it's next to impossible to gross me out anymore.